Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 257 posts

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#81

Post by yorwba »

learc83 wrote: post #51
yorwba wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely learn enough Mandarin to be useful in 2 years of weekly classes. Source: That was my level when I went to China. I felt not at all ready, but then I discovered that my limited knowledge could get me quite far with a little effort.

Useful isn't an objective metric for language competency. Cramming for a few weeks before visiting a country is useful. It takes the average fully trained foreign service officer who already speaks multiple languages about 2200 hours to become proficient. And this is 2200 hours at arguably the best language school in the world doing nothing but studying Chinese full time. 2 years of of Weekly classes is about 100 hou…

You were the one who was talking about usefulness. While it may not be an objective metric, it's still what everyone evaluates their language ability on: whether they can use it to talk to people.

The bar for diplomats is much higher, since they need to be fluent enough to avoid a diplomatic incident. Would you trust someone with 2 years of high-school French to speak that well?

That said, I agree that Chinese is more difficult than most other languages; mostly due to the writing system, which even Chinese schools spread over multiple years for good reason. But that is no argument against offering the language anyway.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#82

Post by NicoJuicy »

dogma1138 wrote: post #75
NicoJuicy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's rude... Source? It's definitely not the CIA Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... Takeaway: EU GDP > America GDP ( don't forget, also the Euro vs USD rose since the start of 2018) ;)

The GDP of Europe is irrelevant for this scenario the monetary relationship between the dolllar and the yuan isn’t like most currencies. Until 2005 it was pegged to the dollar completely since then it’s effectively pegged to the rate at which China buys dollar bonds.

Do you have a source or reference where i can get a deeper information/knowledge about the relationship between the dollar, yuan and bonds?

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#83

Post by acd »

A lot of the Dollars value are due to trade of oil being conducted with US dollars. Thus the Federal reserve has had a special privilege of being to able to print new US dollars through debt which a large commodity oil are being traded in.

However with the rise of electric cars in the future there may be less demand for the Petro dollar. How will a new world currency be formed, will it be a Petro Yuan or will it be a global crypto currency like Bitcoin? Doesnt a new global crypto currency need to have around 2% inflation new coins per year to stop hoarding from occurring?

US produces a lot of IT-services for example Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Netflix, Arbbnb Dropbox but nowadays less physical goods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_hegemony

Rise of the Petro Yuan https://dailyreckoning.com/rise-petro-yuan-slow-erosion-doll...

Historically reserve currencies has lasted around 100 hundred years. https://philosophyofmetrics.com/history-of-world-reserve-cur...

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#84

Post by maze-le »

AstralStorm wrote: post #24
sarchertech wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese is many times harder to learn than the other languages you mentioned for Native English speakers. It takes about 4 times as long as French and Spanish to become proficient. Given the amount of time kids spend on foreign languages in school, there's no way they're learning enough Mandarin to be useful. I took Mandarin as an undergrad, and I can understand more Spanish despite having never studied it.

Too late. Mandarin and Chinese in general requires a slightly different way of thinking that is better and way more easily absorbed when young. 10k ideograms is not that hard compared to say 7k words needed to have basic fluency in English. You would need about twice as much to be considered reasonably fluent. Grammar is relatively easy, proper pronunciation is much more critical than in English.

Its never "Too late", its just a bit harder.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#85

Post by herbst »

clacke2 wrote: post #21
linkmotif wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes sense, would you please elaborate the connection between these two thoughts?

1. China is gaining in relevance. 2. People don't understand that they should worry about this.

Why is this particularly a reason to worry? I for one welcome a well needed fresh wind in our global ecosystem.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#86

Post by iforgotpassword »

xir78 wrote: post #3

A few years ago I couldn’t tell you the name of a Chinese company off the top of my head, now I can not only rattle of a list, they’re companies I’ve worked with or have significant investments in companies in the US. I also have a roster of WeChat contacts. I also work with multiple ex-pats that fled fearing for their life due to persecution based on their religion (Falung Gong), and laugh at how freaked people are…

Ah yes, a topic about China and the top comment is some American spreading the usual fud about how China is the pure evil, like it has been engrained into their brains from the day they were born. Sad to see hn is no better than reddit these days.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#87

Post by herbst »

mtgx wrote: post #30
kylell wrote: post #6

this is also an effect of US isolationism and America first rhetoric which also means abandoning other states, eg. Ukraine, when the US loses its influence/importance so does the dollar, meaning you can't print like crazy and export your inflation in the world.

It's only a shame that it has to be a country like China that rises up at US' expense, rather than say Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, etc. What happens to global human rights when it's China that has an oversized influence on world politics and when countries start easily accepting extraditions to China (say for criticizing the Chinese leader, which could be a crime there), and many other outcomes like that? US' track…

> but at least if you discount US' human rights violations in the Middle East

Can we not just discount the issues with china then as well?

I think the one big difference here is that nobody expects china to invade their country, violate human rights within their own country or put pressure on their local politics for various reasons (other than random trade agreements maybe).

All things nearly everyone pretty much expects from the U.S. at this point.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#88

Post by chvid »

cabalamat wrote: post #63
chvid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it does - history is full of examples of just that. As the middle class grows in economic terms, it grows in political influence and the overall values of the society changes to accommodate that class. Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.

China may be different. Their planned social credit reputation system, coupled with ubiquitous surveillance, may make it impossible for public opinion in China to force the Chinese government to liberalise. In the past, the West has had a massive advantage because: (1) their econpomic system was better than everyone else's, and (2) in order to modernise, other cultures have had to adopt some of the West's characteris…

Maybe. But china’s overall path is towards more democracy and civil liberty. Compare tianamen square 30 years ago with the handling of the Hong Kong protests.

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#89

Post by coldtea »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #86
xir78 wrote: post #3

A few years ago I couldn’t tell you the name of a Chinese company off the top of my head, now I can not only rattle of a list, they’re companies I’ve worked with or have significant investments in companies in the US. I also have a roster of WeChat contacts. I also work with multiple ex-pats that fled fearing for their life due to persecution based on their religion (Falung Gong), and laugh at how freaked people are…

Ah yes, a topic about China and the top comment is some American spreading the usual fud about how China is the pure evil, like it has been engrained into their brains from the day they were born. Sad to see hn is no better than reddit these days.

Especially since throughout the 20th and 21st century, it wasn't China who was a constant global cop/aggressor, invading countries, spreading "democracy", meddling in Latin America, Asia, Middle East AND Europe, and so on...

Re: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

#90

Post by coldtea »

herbst wrote: post #85
clacke2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. China is gaining in relevance. 2. People don't understand that they should worry about this.

Why is this particularly a reason to worry? I for one welcome a well needed fresh wind in our global ecosystem.

Well, those that lose their 1st place might not welcome it as much...
Post reply on HN